Constant Firefighting is a loss

This mechanism is aimed at healing from burnout , stress and the prolonged effects of the fight and flight response . Many of us live under constant stress because we haven't learned to detach from the fear-driven response system .

So to better explain that response , I'm going to describe it with the term of firefighting and how constant firefighting for us as humans is a complete loss . Firefighting is a metaphorical term which I'm using here to refer to you dealing with life's crisis , like major disagreements , professional setbacks , parenting challenges and the like .

These situations demand a heightened emotional and mental engagement . A lot of times , these situations trigger our primal fight-or-flight response . So firefighting is our internal reactive mode of handling these immediate crises .

These firefighting episodes carry intense emotions , such as anger , defensiveness , and , while this may be appropriate temporarily , what becomes unsustainable is if it's continued . When you react strongly during an argument , your mind will later keep replaying the event , leading to ongoing feelings of guilt , remorse or anger .

This mental replay causes prolonged reactive stress where the body continues to suffer under the strain long after the initial event is over . Such repeated stress severely impacts your emotional and physical health . So for those of you who are new at emotional regulation , while your initial reactions may be automatic , you can learn to control your ongoing responses .

Emotions naturally dissipate quickly , lasting only about 30 to 90 seconds . But when we continually revisit each moment with our thoughts , we are recreating these difficult emotions in the future moments . We're keeping the stress alive .

Understanding this alone will help you manage and eventually reduce the emotional turmoil from your past events , because when you catch yourself in the rumination phase , just a dental redirection to the current moment or future possibilities is going to help immensely .

This rumination is what recreates the quote-unquote fire in your body , because what you recreate with your mind is very real to your body . The emotional response is proportionate to the thoughts that you're carrying and sometimes even stronger when you constantly revisit the situation , depending on how intensely you're thinking about it . Constant firefighting is unsustainable .

You simply do not have an endless supply of emotional energy to keep fueling this firefighting response . Being in a perpetual state of firefighting leads to burnout . That's what creates a lack of personal growth and ongoing stress . My invite to you in this podcast is a proactive approach to each fire in your life .

Invite to you in this podcast is a proactive approach to each fire in your life . If you're facing an undesirable situation and you do react with a heightened response , then once the situation is over , I want you to spend time learning from it . Your healing will come from developing strategies to manage or prevent future crises .

Evolving beyond the reactive firefighting to a more reflective and strategic handling of life's challenges only comes from learning from your past .

If you are living in a prolonged stress response , constantly firefighting because you lost your job once , or currently haven't gotten any interviews , or have a disengaged spouse or an angry teenager , or you didn't get accepted in the college of your choice , not only is your body under stress during the event , it's under stress with the constant reimagination of the

event . So , while the firefighting moment of an argument or receiving hard news absolutely calls for a higher emotional engagement or receiving hard news absolutely calls for a higher emotional engagement , either anger or some other defense mechanism engagement , which is the appropriate response , which is what this podcast is calling the firefighting response .

What I'm telling you that it is not appropriate for this high emotional engagement to be ongoing , because that's what's not sustainable .

So I can accept and understand your heightened response to a challenging situation , but what I will not accept is your passive re-engagement and mental reenactment of the situation , because all you're doing is recreating the stress response without having any beneficial outcome of actually finding answers or solutions to your problem .

Even if the situation in your life requires an increased emotional response and calls for more of your mental resources to be delegated with attention , it absolutely does not require your rumination . Firefighting involves actions to manage or resolve the crisis . It's a way of handling immediate , urgent issues that arise .

But your short-sightedness lies in always being reactive to these fires . You can absolutely have a high emotional engagement during a challenge , but you don't always have to be reactive , because reactivity is only about the short term , focusing on dealing with the immediate problem .

It does not let you address the underlying cause and it definitely does not let you learn from the experience to prevent future fires and is detrimental to your long-term outcome . The approach here is to learn from each of these fires and develop strategies to prevent or better manage future crises .

That way , you move beyond the reactive phase into a more proactive and reflective way of handling challenges . When you're dealing with each specific situation like arguments in a relationship , then , after things calm down , just set some time aside to analyze the situation .

Now be very careful if you're doing this for the first time , because you might have a tendency to fall back into rumination to recreate the situation and reconstruct the heightened emotional response of guilt , regret or anger . That's not what I'm asking when I ask you to recreate the situation for learning purposes with your mind .

I'm asking you to analyze and learn from it . I'm asking you to break it down and come to it with neutrality , and the best way to do it is to write about it Once you've released the emotional charge that's attached to your situation , by writing about it on paper , then come back to it and analyze it at another time .

The goal here is for thoughtful reflection post-conflict , because if you keep jumping from conflict to conflict , never having learned a lesson in between of how to respond effectively , there will be no harmony in between of how to respond effectively , there will be no harmony in your relationships , there will be no growth in your career , there will be no improvement

in your financial independence goals . So this level of mind management requires reflection after reactivity . Let's say , if it's a professional setback , this is your invite to reassess so that you can respond to the situation in a more constructive manner . A non-judgmental self-reflection is called for .

What can you do about it without being a victim of the situation or without internalizing the setback , without making it mean that you are the failure rather than you suffered from a failure ? We are shifting away from fear-based response in the post-firefighting phase .

After you have self-regulated from the heightened emotional response to the stressful situation and you have de-escalated yourself to a more level-headed position , then it's time for you to go into a more forward-thinking approach . It's time for you to go into a more forward-thinking approach . This is where the healing lies .

This is where your opportunity to minimize future occurrences lies . This is where you can optimize your response to the situation for a long-term benefit . This is where you actually get to design your life you envisioned .

If you're trying to be a more gentle and effective parent than always just reacting to your child's behaviors , then during the reflection time , develop future strategies for a calm , reflective response . Over time , this constant core correction through self-engagement will lead you to be a much more effective and empathic parent than constantly fighting fires .

Constant firefighting in your life is a sure-shot way to create burnout . Coaching in that way is an extremely effective tool for you to move from reactive to proactive responses , which lets you handle crises effectively , focuses on your growth and sustainability .

Successful management of a crisis situation does not mean minimizing its severity , nor does it mean that you don't do damage control .

It just means learning and reflecting , developing proactive mindset that reduces the frequency and the future emotional impact of such situations on yourself , meaning future episodes don't derail you as much and you are less and less reactive each time , meaning you will have less cleaning up to do .

After the fact , your life is a curriculum that is handed to you specifically for your growth and development , specifically written for you by Allah SWT . This exact life that you're living is your opportunity to awaken your inner intelligence .

Each crisis is a lesson in this textbook that is your life , and the successful passing of the lesson quiz comes from you learning how to respond differently each time in each future situation . I do believe that this is the whole point of us being alive .

This level of personal and internal development is what our life is designed to do , especially when all of this work brings us closer to Allah SWT In an escalated situation . With this method , you will learn to regulate yourself , to manage your emotional responses through your thoughts , and the point of change always lies with your thoughts .

Restoring long-term harmony comes from dismantling the event and learning from it with a grounded presence , not while you're in a fight response .

If you want your future life to be different than what's going on now , going from argument to argument , fire to fire then you will have to engage with each incident in a way where you can retroactively deconstruct the situation and learn from it for your own benefit . And that level of groundedness requires mind management .

It requires for you to be able to think about your thinking and for you to be able to direct your mind in order to take charge of the situation . If you're constantly firefighting , you're losing Life's quote-unquote . Fires require your engagement , but they don't need to consume your calm . Manage them , don't let them manage you .

You're losing precious energy if you're using mental real estate constantly fighting fires . You can otherwise use this energy to build and construct your envisioned life . You will be losing your physical health because of a constant cortisol response in your body and stress hormone release .

People who are only used to putting up fires will wait for a crisis before acting or they will create conflicts and fires because their mind craves stimulation a lot of times , subconsciously . This is a rather ineffective way of living , to say the least , but for sure it's a way to create burnout , because high constant energy mode is not sustainable .

Because high constant energy mode is not sustainable , in medical terms it's called the activation of hypothalamus , pituitary adrenal axis arousal or HPA axis arousal . If you're always putting out fires , you're not letting yourself recover . You are not letting yourself heal . Firefighting is a temporary response , not a sustainable lifestyle .

You know you have successfully curved your habit of firefighting if you learn and grow from each crisis and develop a proactive mindset . That way these crises become more infrequent and are manageable if they do happen . Now you can get coached to put fires out .

But most importantly , you do that so you can have well-being , so you're not going through your life just dealing with crisis . A lot of people come to me for coaching in an acute firefighting phase . A lot of women come to coaching in an exhaustion burnout phase . Each confrontation , each challenge in life teaches a lesson .

Miss the lesson and the cycle will repeat . If you're not sure whether you're firefighting in your life or not , then here are some examples . You might find yourself saying things like why does this keep happening to me ? Why is my child growing up to be disrespectful ? No matter what I do , nothing makes a difference .

I always have to clean up after everyone else's mistakes . No matter how much I plan , something always goes wrong . Why does every conversation with my husband turn into an argument ? Why am I the only one trying to fix things ?

Or , if you're like me , you lose your mind when the landscaper cuts the wires to your Ramadan holiday decoration in the front of your house . I mean two years in a row . Firefighting for me is blaming him for how irresponsible he is for doing that . I want to let him go of his landscaping responsibilities .

When I'm in the recovery phase , I can see that I didn't tell him to be careful . I didn't even warn him that there are going to be wires outside , because he trims the hedges during the day when the decorative lights are not on . So during my reconstruction phase , I come up with ideas of how to handle the situation differently next time .

That's the power of coaching . I didn't always used to be that way . The problem isn't the crisis . It's in you , not learning from the experience . It's about management . Failing to evolve is where you've missed the opportunity . This involves employing a level of intelligence that is hidden from most people , but everyone carries it .

This is a form of whole brain intelligence , or what I call SQ soulful intelligence . I teach a method of waking up your inner intelligence that Allah gave you so that you can deal with the exact life that you've been given . As a coach , I help you through guided discussions , reflective exercises , supportive encouragement .

I facilitate a process of exploring and developing this inner resource . Coaching for well-being , not just for crisis management . You get a lot of support until you've learned how to be your own authority in your life , but eventually the biggest outcomes is that you prevent fires , and if there are fires , they're few and far between .

They don't leave you consumed and you deal with them in a way that you don't later regret , so that you're not constantly burning the candle from both ends . There is a noticeable difference in the demeanor and energy of someone who has benefited from coaching . There's something palpable but really yet indescribable about them .

Other people around them feel it when such a woman who's been coached and manages her mind and self-regulates when she enters a room , her evolved presence is immediately apparent to everyone , even if they can't put their finger on it . Women who have engaged with deep personal development treat each crisis like a lesson to be mastered .

In a moment that demands a firefighting response , they act decisively to protect themselves and limit the damage . But she also recognizes that resolving the immediate issue is just the beginning . But she also recognizes that resolving the immediate issue is just the beginning . The true lesson is in the learning from these experiences .

Unresolved crises lead to a life of firefighting rather than fireproofing . So what we've learned so far is a chronic state of stress that stems from the unrelenting firefighting response , often triggered by life's quote-unquote , metaphorical fires , challenges like disputes , setbacks , failures . These situations prompt a response of heightened emotional reactions .

But prolonged state of such reactions create burnout until life starts to look like the opposite of what you want it to be . The reason of a triggered state persisting beyond the immediate moment is that you mentally replay the confrontations , the failures , the mishaps , re-triggering the stress response . The emotions from the moment do not last that long .

The heightened emotions are recreated in each moment with your thoughts

. I'm hoping that you will shift from reactive to a more proactive , reflective approach learning from each crisis to better manage your life , because constant firefighting is a loss and the aftermath of adversity lays the groundwork for a more intentional life . With that , I pray to Allah SWT for a more intentional life . With that , I pray to Allah SWT .

O Allah the most merciful , please allow us to come across resources that give us a fulfilling life , one that we can live by being closer to you . O Allah , make this podcast a key to understanding and healing and make it a means to overcome stress and burnout .

Make this podcast a wasila to enlighten and assist the listeners , guiding you guys away from relentless cycles of stress and towards a path of self-awareness and recovery . O Allah , provide us the tools needed to detach from a fear-driven response so that we can embrace our life of peace and proactive growth , especially in our spirituality .

Ameen , ya Rabbul Ameen , please keep me in your draaz . I will talk to you guys next time .